Last class

August 17, 2002 was my first day in the USA, I Came from Jeddah city in my country Saudi Arabia in order to work as a training officer. Since I got on the plan I was thinking how is going to be my life how can I live alone specially that I came from a society that cares about family connection rather than anything else. However, I arrived in Dulles airport; I was impressed to green everywhere, nice highway, and heavy trafficJ.

Since then I started studying and every day I learn something new, until I took my ITEC300 class “social net working”, I knew that I didn’t learn anything. I was not expecting the kind of huge technology that we have reached such as internet, blogs, messenger, chatting, second life tech, and virtual team. I’m really amazed from what I learned in this class, I realized that the existence of new technology made our life smaller, as if we live in a one place not a huge world anymore.

People live in Saudi Arabia can chat, talk, and see others in different continent while are sitting on the couch drinking their coffee, and won’t cost them more than cents believe it or not. Whereas couple years ago you only can do that by face to face conversation or watch them trough the TV and if you want to talk to someone that isn’t in your area will cost dollars if not hundreds.

No matter how old you are, from where you are, what race or sex you are. All are human talk in one language; if these rules apply, you can get the advantages of this huge revelation. In marketing, business in general, forms friendship, volunteer organization. Moreover, it could help to change courtiers’ diplomacy not only small organization or institution.

Finally, I wish for all my classmate and Prof. Melander best wishes in their life

Globalization

It's really something nice to see how someone could help and contribute to the betterment of society or to the "social good" without even moving from your chair or place!. the world is getting more and more connected and people from all over the world who have the same interest are getting closer to each other.

for a middle generation person like me, remembering perhaps couple of yours ago,before the invention of the Internet or advanced technology like cell phones or pagers at least in my country. It was almost impossible to be connected with someone even from our family. after the introduction of the pager, people were very excited and amazed of this technology. they even sometimes paged each other just for fun to listen to the sound to this amazing device. At that time, it was very difficult to communicate and create as simple as local organization.

Then came the revolution of cell phones and Internet. by this, things became much easier. It made it even easier to create international organizations and communicate globally with different people and cultures. People became more aware of each other differences in terms of customs and culture and this in turn made communication more effective between different countries. for example, I don't have to travel to China to know their culture or even from Saudi Arabia to Italy. the "social networking" environment is helping in resolving cultural, diplomatic,political and religious conflicts between people as we interact more and more with each other to serve for the betterment for our society.

In my humble opinion, the social networking will help, in the near future, in producing a mixture of globally interacted custom and cultures.

Overlap

The Term “user generated content” is so unattractive to me. I don’t know why but I think using the term social networking lead s to the same meaning. I believe that any website that offers that opportunity for consumers to share their knowledge and familiarity with a product or experience could just be called “social networking.” I think using to many terms is misleading sometimes.
The “UCG”, or what I would like to call social networking, allows all users the choice of becoming participants rather than just viewers or audience. It also provides knowledge experts for audience as well not only participants.
However, the “UCG” might cause some issues of incredibility and biased information that might be sometimes useless for participants. This could also lead to content overlap or duplicity.

It's time to like politics.......

Day after day in this semester I discover that social networking penetrates in every domain. the articles and book topic of this week explained a new advantage that we can gain from the use of social network, which is the the political aspect.

mentioned in the book, the advantage of blogging and it's effect on the campaign of Howard Dean, one can really notice the reality of the use of social networking not only in marketing and socializing but also in politics........ as I mentioned in two of previous blogs"how to be a millioner" & " Bloglization" that there is no limit to the use of blogging.

a good example that needs to be mentioned here is in the article about the the two teens. I wasn't surprised about the use of facebook or myspace; however, the idea itself of raising money through social networking by the two teenagers grabbed my attention. It's really nice to see how younger generations are taking the advantages in a real positive way rather than abusing or misusing the technology.

looking for a job?.....

The articles I read reminded me of a conversation that we had in class related to recruiting and hiring by referral networking. It was a very debatable topic, some agreed and some disagreed of the advantages of the referral networking process. I was one of those who were pro referral networking. my rational behind this, was that even if you get hired or get a job through referral, your job isn't going to last if you are not being really committed coz people are paying you money to be in their organization and if you are not good enough certainly they are going to look for another person to do the job.

The same rational also applies for using the blog as resume or using social networking for recruitment. Surely, It's a very easy and inexpensive way to get connected and find the right person for any specific job.However, if that person doesn't prove to be "the One"...... well good luck for him or her in finding another job.

I think that the best advantage of any business form of social networking is to be connected with others in the same business and share knowledge and expertise.

It's small world after all..

Every week I learn something new with the ITEC class. Sometimes I read about stuff that I haven't heard about. This week's articles content is certainly a new info for me. And I'm thinking seriously to join one of the professional websites. I really like the Idea. Some way or another we have to admit that the advantages of the technology. I can't even keep up with the latest techniques. I feel overwhelmed by the new technology. It feels like I'm having an "info.rush hour" in my head!!.

These website would definitely help companies especially for the Human resource functions in terms of recruiting, hiring and connecting to other people to share experience. This kind of technology makes life easier for professional people to stay connected with others in the same interest of business. If I were an HR manager, I would definitely be connected with any of these professional websites as a type of informal networking.

"15 uses of prof......." lists interesting points for the uses of professional websites. I liked the idea of number 5 & 13. I've never thought that it would be this easy to socially network in a professional manner.

Time is Money

When time is gone. It's gone!. whatever you do you will never can get it back. It's really important to manage time especially in this century of "technology era". everything requires to be done fast, efficient and in an easy way. So definitely the idea of collaborative virtual teamwork by using the available technology from Internet to satellite radars is fitting the context of the fast growing globalized environment. As the population growth is increasing rapidly, our responsibilities from being an individual or an organization is growing as well to cope with the changes fast and efficient.

Just a simple imagination of how our lives would be without the Internet drives me crazy! I still can't imagine how we used to manage our hectic life responsibilities without using e-mails, for example, to confirm meetings or send documents in just seconds!.

having a collaborative teams by using the Web services from Basecamp to Wiki saves time, money and energy. It can be widely applied to different sectors from public to private.

However, maybe because I'm from an older generation, I still see face to face meetings exist on a wide bases from the political to the business environment . I really think that the technology is Superior but it's weakest point is in delivering emotions compared to face to face meetings.

Watch out!

I really had a very busy week, three midterms and 2 projects.exausted!...sorry I'm not going talk long in this blog. Anyways,regarding" startups help......" I believe that trust is highly linked to reputation. I'm not really familiar with the American culture but in my perspective I don''t think that reputation management companies will last for long.

So hiring companies should be reasonable when evaluating a persons resume for a job. It's really shame on companies to search for the applicants privacy, even if it's everywhere in the Internet. Since the company have the important info. in the application or resume I think it's more than enough for them to know about their future employee. nothing forces any company to hire a certain employee so the decision is all theirs at the end of the day.

the best of two worlds

surely this is the internet age from e-mails to blogging. however, is it really healthy for the coming generations to have an unconstrained "blogsphere"?. I believe that limit should be an aspect of every single thing we do in our life. this means that there should be a limit on the freedom of blogging to protect the users from abusers.

several questions came to my mind when reading" naked conversations".So will blog kill old media?. will the journalist be a "historical job" for the coming generations?. one should pay attention to the growing "blogsphere". sure it's a fantastic way for executives to connect truly and freely with their customers without a cost, but i don't think that it is a 100% honesty by all users. similar to media, where truth is sometimes lost. in spite of that, I believe that Media and bloggs are interrelated in a way that blogging can sometimes be used as a media tool. the key here is that blogging is threatening the weakest point of traditional journalism which is it's the lack of personal contact with it's audience.

the bottom line is that media and blogging should be combined to serve for the betterment of our society.

this is a link, related to the topic.
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/comm/20030202edmoon02p1.asp

Free ticket .

WooooooooW, It's really amazing. The second life should be the definition of "amazing". It's the time to visit anyplace in the world, learn different cultures, meet different people , gain experience from different perspective of expertise and learn anything you've ever dreamed of without any barriers. I'm really speechless this "second life" idea is above my imagination. I hope it could be in different languages including Arabic. i believe that it's going to be the next big revolution in the world that's if it's not already the "big thing". On the other hand, I suggest that pharmaceutical companies should invent a new glasses for protecting the vision and another medicine for preventing " hemorrhoid " that people will definitely get from the long hours of sitting in front of the PC ;)here is copule of links related to the topic, hope u like it
http://secondlife.com/
http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/611

Blogger's team

Hi everyone here is some bloggers link.enjoy it:)
http://jkhedouri.blogspot.com/
http://colleenchatlos.blogspot.com/
http://timsblog75.blogspot.com/
http://jadis86.blogspot.com/
http://abdul-harthi.blogspot.com/

How to be a Millioner

in continuous to my previous blog, there is no doubt that blog became one of the essential elements in our daily lives from A-Z. It spread so fast all over the world in a short period of time as stated by the author and this proofs that it's indeed a healthy thing to society. For me, Blogs are considered as an " interactive encyclopedia" . people can gain their need of information and knowledge about everything they want to know even if it's personal thing. for example, one of my friends wanted to have some consultation about a law case that he had, so he joined a blog site for lawyer and he shared with them his view and this led to a beneficial conclusion.

Moreover,the realistic statistics of marketing research has proven that blogs increased the consumer awareness rapidly with a zero cost. Our human nature tends to trust people who tried a product more than paying attention to an advertisement. because advertising always gives us the advantage and the bright side of the product, nothing else. Whereas, Blogs gives us the whole perspective about the products. furthermore, blog marketing advantage doesn't stop at this point. In fact. market researchers and product redevelopers gain a huge information without even loosing one cent.

while we are talking about the advantage of blogs, we shouldn't forget the abuse bloggers. in my perspective, there can be people who get payed by a certain company just for "blogging" their needs and interests to spread whatever the company wants to sell. For example, based on true story, one of the CEO's of a well-known company spread a rumor about a very good news that in turn will rise it's share in the market and he got the rumor for his advantage in selling his own stocks.

Bloglization

Indeed, blogs is a huge revolution now a days, and it’s “the time” to be one of their members. Bloger’s comments come from the heart to reach the hearts of users or readers, so it reviles huge and truthful information to both customers and the organization, for either new or old product. For instance, Iphone when it first came out, there was an enormous blogs corresponding. It created a fertile flow of information for users, hackers, and the company itself. In fact, one of my friends got the advantage of unlocking his Iphone through the blog. Another example is from my own experience, couple of years ago before the emergence of blogs I tried to get into the stock market but unfortunately I lost my money. On the other hand, couple moths ago I got back to the stock market with the help of bloggers who has the experience that I needed to get in order to survive the market.


Moreover, I really liked the part of the book that had to do with publishing a blog manifesto for the company. I think this should be a “must” for all companies. It will help in understanding their customers.


I believe that blog is the language of globalization. It’s a “one to many” conversation. There is no limitation in the advantage of using the blogs. It removes the cultural gaps, political conflicts…etc of the whole world.

Read it with morning Coffee

There were a number of points that I agreed as well as disagreed regarding informal network. The first one is related to extensive communication and how it helps an informal network In the real world, there is a big difference in terms of what the person actually is saying and what sort of meaning does that talk even have on the other person. This means that if the talk has no good points or points of quality in it, then there really isn’t much of a significance no matter how much the person will communicate with the other person to create a larger informal network.
One of the points that I don’t agree with is the point that says how people fit into a network is a matter of personality and considers this to be a myth. I think this isn’t true because from my own work experience, the majority of people seem to have a personality type that really doesn’t change much and so these people really choose the type of network in which they fit due to their particular personality.
Moreover, every strong network, whether it is formal or an informal one, should really have a high degree of trust and honesty in it. There was once an occasion when I was part of a team where work was divided among us. One of my team members always showed that he had gathered the necessary data needed for the project. But once I overheard his conversation saying that he still hadn’t got any data and will try to look for it soon and I really felt cheated. So trust has to be there in any particular network for it to become more successful at the work place.

"on my honor, all posts this blog are my own"

Blog 1

This article reminds me of my own job experience, there are a number of times when different types of work can be done through an informal rather than a formal channel. This means that rather than using corporate work, one is able to get the work done by informally talking to friends either at the company or someone outside. In terms of the idea of the central person in a given contact, I would really consider myself to be the central person in my place as well as work. I work as a raining officer and on a daily basis; it is my central duty to act as the central communications person so all the people working with me has to interact with each other to know updates.
Just as the article talks about how performance management is related to one’s social contract and the amount of work done, I really believe that the goal for one should be to keep expanding the social contacts with the right people.

I also agree with the main points made in the article “Making Invisible Work Visible”. It’s indeed true that work tends to be done with more ease and also much more work done in a short period of time when there are less hierarchical levels as well as making it easy to coordinate work. This is the same scenario that happened in one of the departments that I worked for a couple of years ago. There were so many hierarchical levels in terms of the managerial level. Some of the hierarchical barriers were removed. This made it easy for the upper level management to be able to coordinate it with the lower level management.
What I want to stress in this blog is that companies should really put more emphasis on bringing more informality into the working place rather than simply asking everyone to follow the set procedures and guidelines. I have seen in the practical work environment that informal organizations really are able to achieve much more in terms of productivity than those companies that are very formal based. Such as goggle
“on my honor, all posts this blog are my own”

WELCOME

First of all welcome everyone in ITEC333 Fall07. My name is Khaled Alnowaiser from Saudi Arabia, I was born and grew up in Jeddah city. I'm a part time senior student at AU, because I'm a full time employee at the Saudi embassy as a training officer in the Air force attache.

"ON MY HONOR, ALL POSTS ON THIS BLOG ARE MY OWN"